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Descriptive statistics: Median and Mode

The median of a sample is the value for which one-half (50%) of the observations (when ranked) will lie above that value and one-half will lie below that value. When the number of values in the sample is even, the median is computed as the average of the two middle values.

Comparing the median with the the mean gives you already a first idea of the distribution. If the median is higher than the mean, most of the values are over the mean and, probably, the mean is low due to very low values in the sample.

MODE

The mode of a sample is the value which occurs most frequently in the sample.

The mean, mode and median are measures of central tendency. None of them give you a measured idea of the dispersion. That's what we will study with the next two indicators.

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